Predicting Production Problems
When a plant is scheduled to run around the clock, downtime becomes a dirty word.
A very dirty word.
Welcome to Copley Chicago Newspapers, where a single press handles four dailies and 14 weeklies serving Chicago's so-called "collar counties," idling only three shifts each week. "That limits our options," says Vic Carrescia, Copley's technical-services manager. "We don't have the luxury of repairing when things break down. We must anticipate."
So Copley turned to predictive-maintenance technology to anticipate problems before they could bring production to its knees. Carrescia says vibration- and infrared-analysis inspections begun in 1998 have saved downtime, decreased maintenance costs and prevented safety hazards by identifying equipment failure prior to breakdown.
"These inspections allow equipment condition, rather than time intervals mandated by preventive-maintenance programs, to determine the need for service," says Carrescia, who has worked at Copley since he started as a part-time yard-maintenance worker in 1976.
NAA Press Manager Frank Balentine says there's great interest in predictive maintenance among newspaper groups, though only a few have taken advantage of vibration-and infrared-analysis inspections.
"It has a big place in the industry," says Balentine. "It can save you a lot of time. For instance, the infrared monitor can find a problem right away, when it used to take two-to-three days to troubleshoot a board."
Carrescia contracted with an outside vendor, Preventive Maintenance Co. Inc. of Elk Grove, Ill., to perform Copley's first vibration analysis last June. The inspection checked 49 pieces of production equipment in the pressroom and packaging department for significant increases in vibration levels over time, which can indicate developing problems such as unbalance, looseness, misalignment, bad belts and bent shafts.
As a result, Copley discovered undetected problems with one of its GMA inserters and a loose dust collector that needed to be secured. Two quarterly vibration inspections have since followed, with the most recent check revealing no abnormalities.
PMCI also performed Copley's first infrared inspection of electrical equipment in production areas in June 1998. Infrared technology pinpoints abnormal temperatures indicating corrosion, loose connections or damaged wiring.
The infrared inspection checked 133 pieces of machinery, including breaker panels, control cabinets and the disconnect locations of all production equipment. A burned wire was discovered inside a tray-system control cabinet. Weak fuse clips were found in an inserter, and improper crimps were sighted on factory-installed fittings in a dust-collector motor-control center.
"We changed the wire one week later," says Carrescia, "and found the insulation burning through. The inspection allowed us to focus on the problem piece of equipment and not worry about tightening everything up."
Based on the success of its vibration- and infrared-analysis inspections, Copley will consider other types of predictive maintenance programs in 1999.
Inkjet Labeling: Three for Three
by Steve Ostrofsky
Two out of three ain't bad. That's the conventional wisdom involved in labeling a total-market-coverage jacket:
- At production gripper-conveyor speeds
- Using a reliable inkjet printer
- Requiring low maintenance.
While many newspaper people will say you can only have two of the three, the folks in the packaging departments of two Florida dailies would disagree.
The Orlando Sentinel and The News-Journal in Daytona Beach both needed to improve TMC labeling operations. They worked together to solve their problems in a seven-month collaborative development project unusual for newspapers under different ownership. Both newspapers had almost identical packaging-equipment setups, centered around Heidelberg's 2299 inserters, and both were interested in adapting Scitex 5120 printers for use on their gripper-conveyor lines. The papers were close enough to easily share ideas, but distant enough to avoid competitive sensitivities.
Staffers had to resolve three important technical issues: maintaining a consistent print-image position, detecting the presence of the product, and adapting the print unit's encoders to the inserting equipment's drive technology. Maintaining a consistent print-image position proved relatively straight forward. A custom frame to hold the print head clamped to the gripper track just upstream of the laydown belt allowed the print head to be set in the same place before each run without time-consuming prerun testing.
Adapting the Scitex printer to "cue," or detect the presence of the product in a gripper-conveyor system, was a bit more complex. An Allen-Bradley fiber-optic system was installed in place of the Scitex cueing system, designed to run with a labeling base and reflectors. Its LED indicators confirm both product detection and return-signal intensity, easing adjustment and maintenance. It also allows fine-tuning the distance between the product and the detector, greatly reducing the chance of "false" cues.
The most challenging problem was adapting the print unit's encoders to the inserting equipment's drive technology. The original test setup did not account for speed changes as the conveyors start and stop, or differences in speed between motors driving the inserter's belts and those driving the gripper chains. The solution was to adapt one of the belts Heidelberg uses to drive its gripper chain as a driver for the encoder.
The News-Journal achieved a production rate of 8,000-to-12,000 copies per hour, with print quality the post office "just loves." The new system has allowed The News-Journal to increase the size of its TMC run from 40,000 to 100,000. The Sentinel is also able to run consistently at 16,000 copies per hour, with low maintenance and excellent print quality.
Ostrofsky is president of Publishing Productivity Systems LLC, Gig Harbor, Wash. E-mail, stevelo@ptinet.net.
50-Inch Update
The number of newspapers converting their presses to a narrower web width continues to increase. An informal meeting of about 20 operations executives at NAA's 1999 Newspaper Operations Super Conference revealed that several major publications are preparing to make the conversion to a 50-inch web, while others have formed teams to evaluate the move. Nearly two dozen others have made the 50-inch switch in recent years (TechNews, September/October 1998, p. 25).
NAA currently is maintaining on its Web site a running list of newspapers planning the conversion (www.naa.org/technology/pressweb/) and will update its earlier report on technical issues surrounding press conversions. Another informal status meeting is scheduled for NEXPO®99 in June.
NAA will conduct a survey and has also launched an electronic forum to discuss web-width conversion issues. Join the e-forum by pointing your Web browser to e-forum.naa.org/#technology.